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[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 1056 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
119th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. RES. 1056
Calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine and the development of
a ``New Good Neighbor'' policy in order to foster improved relations
and deeper, more effective cooperation between the United States and
its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 10, 2026
Ms. Velazquez (for herself, Mrs. Ramirez, Mr. Johnson of Georgia, Ms.
Tlaib, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Clarke of New York, Ms. Lee of
Pennsylvania, Ms. Norton, Mr. Casar, Mrs. Grijalva, Mr. Garcia of
Illinois, Ms. Schakowsky, Ms. Garcia of Texas, Ms. Jayapal, Mr. Jackson
of Illinois, Mr. Pocan, Ms. Omar, and Ms. Simon) submitted the
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign
Affairs, and in addition to the Committees on Financial Services, and
Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the
Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall
within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine and the development of
a ``New Good Neighbor'' policy in order to foster improved relations
and deeper, more effective cooperation between the United States and
its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.
Whereas, over two centuries ago, President James Monroe announced that the
United States Government would actively oppose any interference by
European powers in the affairs of independent Latin American and
Caribbean countries ``for the purpose of oppressing them or controlling
in any other manner their destiny'';
Whereas, over time, this policy, referred to as the ``Monroe Doctrine'', came to
be interpreted by many United States policymakers as a mandate for
United States interference in the sovereign affairs of Latin American
and Caribbean countries in order to protect and promote perceived
powerful economic and political interests in the United States,
irrespective of genuine external tangible threats to countries in the
region posed by foreign powers;
Whereas, following a period of western expansion of the United States, resulting
in the massive, forced displacement and genocide of Native peoples who
originally inhabited much of North America, United States political and
business leaders took an increasingly active interest in the acquisition
of raw materials and in investment opportunities in other parts of the
Western Hemisphere;
Whereas, after annexing the territory of Texas, the United States invaded Mexico
militarily in 1846 and, after defeating the Mexican Army and occupying
Mexico City, acquired 55 percent of Mexico's territory through the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848;
Whereas, in 1856, President Franklin Pierce recognized the dictatorial regime in
Nicaragua established by United States colonialist William Walker, whose
regime's measures included the legalization of slavery in Nicaragua;
Whereas, in 1898, the United States invaded Puerto Rico and Cuba during the
Spanish-American War and continues to maintain control of Puerto Rico,
as well as a piece of territory in Guantanamo, Cuba, to this day;
Whereas, from 1898 to 1934, the United States conducted military interventions
in Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic, known as the ``Banana Wars'', in order to advance powerful
corporate American financial interests, that often came at the expense
of United States support for dictatorships and flagrant human rights
violations across the region;
Whereas, in 1904, President Teddy Roosevelt established the Roosevelt Corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine, whereby the United States could intervene to
ensure the protection of United States interests and those of foreign
creditors in the region, and declared that the United States could
exercise ``international police power'' in ``flagrant cases of such
wrongdoing and impotence'';
Whereas, in 1909, President William Howard Taft sent United States warships to
Nicaragua as part of an effort to overthrow the Government of Nicaraguan
President Jose Santos Zelaya, before launching an invasion of the
country in 1912, setting off a period of sustained United States-led
intervention, occupation, and repression that would ultimately give rise
to the brutal, multigenerational Somoza family dictatorship;
Whereas, in 1915, and against the background of the United States Government's
longstanding hostility toward the precedent set by Haiti's successful
revolution in 1804, President Woodrow Wilson led a United States
invasion and occupation of Haiti that would last until 1934;
Whereas the United States invasion, occupation, and continued interference in
Haiti, combined with the massive economic impact of the payments that
the country was forced to make to the former colonial power, France,
under threat of military aggression, until 1947, impeded the country's
efforts to build robust democratic institutions and enabled the rise of
the United States-supported dictatorship of Francois Duvalier and his
son Jean-Claude Duvalier, which brutally ruled the country from 1957 to
1986;
Whereas, in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the
establishment of a ``Good Neighbor'' policy toward the region that
sought to emphasize nonintervention, noninterference, and shared
prosperity trade in contrast with the previous policy of using military
force to advance United States interests;
Whereas, in 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act
which created the Central Intelligence Agency (hereafter in this
preamble referred to as the ``CIA'') and authorized the agency to begin
covert action in the region;
Whereas, in 1953, after democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo
Arbenz instituted proworker policies that threatened the profit margins
of United States corporation United Fruit Company, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower authorized the CIA to begin Operation PBSuccess, a
multimillion-dollar project involving investing in ``psychological
warfare and political action'' that led to the coup against President
Arbenz in 1954;
Whereas, in 1961, the United States covertly financed opposition leaders and
began seeking military leaders to support the eventual 1964 coup against
Brazilian President Joao Goulart which resulted in a 21-year military
dictatorship in Brazil;
Whereas the Organization of American States (hereafter in this preamble referred
to as the ``OAS''), headquartered in the District of Columbia, and
funded in large part by the United States Government, remained largely
silent and inactive with regard to the many egregious abuses perpetrated
by United States-backed military rightwing dictatorships during the
decades of the Cold War;
Whereas, in 1962, the United States imposed a full embargo on Cuba, still in
place today, which has led to tens of billions of dollars in capital
losses for the island country, and has contributed significantly to the
immiseration of the Cuban people;
Whereas, following the election of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1970,
United States President Richard Nixon directed the CIA to spread
propaganda aimed at preventing Allende from taking power, and later,
actively worked with and supported Chilean military leaders that carried
out the 1973 coup of President Allende resulting in a 15-year-long
military dictatorship in which at least 40,000 people were tortured and
more than 3,000 killed;
Whereas, from 1975 to 1980, the United States actively supported Operation
Condor, a coordinated campaign of political repression and state
terrorism that saw the United States work closely with military
governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay,
Peru, and Uruguay to help kidnap, torture, and kill people who had left
their home countries in exile;
Whereas, following a regional debt crisis sparked in part by historic Federal
Reserve interest rate hikes, the International Monetary Fund (hereafter
in this preamble referred to as the ``IMF'') vastly expanded its lending
portfolio in Latin America;
Whereas the IMF, whose largest shareholder is the United States, promoted
austerity, deregulation, and other structural reforms that resulted in
stagnant economic growth in much of Latin America in the 1980s and
1990s, following two decades of strong economic growth;
Whereas, in 1983, under the false pretense that the safety of 600 United States
medical students in Grenada was under threat, President Ronald Reagan
authorized the military invasion of the island country, a move condemned
as a ``flagrant violation of international law'' by the United Nations
General Assembly;
Whereas, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration--
(1) supported security forces in Guatemala that perpetrated a genocide
against Mayan Indigenous peoples, according to the Commission of Historical
Clarification;
(2) supported death squads in El Salvador;
(3) supported rightwing paramilitary militias (Contras) in Nicaragua;
and
(4) participated in efforts to coverup egregious crimes perpetrated by
Central American security forces, such as the massacre of 6 Jesuit priests
and 2 other unarmed civilians by an elite United States-backed battalion in
El Salvador;
Whereas the United States-backed ``dirty wars'' of Central America triggered a
major wave of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua to
the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s;
Whereas, in 1989, President George H.W. Bush launched ``Operation Just Cause'',
a unilateral United States invasion of Panama conducted in violation of
international law, leading to mass civilian casualties, including in the
bombing of low-income, civilian population centers such as El Chorillo,
where casualties are credibly estimated to have been in the hundreds;
Whereas the CIA covertly financed units of the Haitian military, whose officers
led a violent coup d'etat in 1991 that overthrew the country's first
democratically elected President, and then continued to support
individuals involved in death squads that targeted supporters of the
ousted President;
Whereas, beginning in 2000, the Bush administration blocked development and
humanitarian assistance to the Haitian Government and provided financial
support to opposition groups culminating in another coup against the
elected President in 2004;
Whereas, starting in 2000, the United States provided billions of dollars of
funding to Plan Colombia, a joint counter narcotics and counter
insurgency initiative which resulted in thousands of civilian
casualties, massive human rights abuses perpetrated by military and
paramilitary forces, and the forced displacement of millions of mostly
Afro-Colombian and Indigenous civilians, while failing to reduce the
production and trafficking of cocaine;
Whereas the United States-backed drug war, along with economic displacement
attributable in part to United States-sponsored free trade agreements,
resulted in another major wave of migration from Central America and
Mexico during the first two decades of the 2000s;
Whereas, from 1941 to 2003, United States Navy operations in Vieques, Puerto
Rico, caused the death of civilians and high rates of lethal illnesses
to the population;
Whereas, in 2002, the United States Government provided funding and other
support to political actors that carried out a short-lived coup against
the democratically elected Government of Venezuela, and subsequently
expressed support for the coup;
Whereas, following the 2009 coup in Honduras, the United States continued to
support the country's illegitimate government by providing, between 2009
and 2016, an estimated $200,000,000 in military and police aid to
Honduran security forces engaged in violent extrajudicial killings and
other human rights crimes targeting protesters, activists, land rights
advocates, and other civilians opposed to the regime;
Whereas, in a 2013 address to the OAS, Secretary of State John Kerry declared
that the ``Monroe Doctrine era is over . . . The relationship that we
seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States
declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other
American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as
equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and
adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners
to advance the values and the interests that we share.'';
Whereas, in 2014, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announce the thawing
of and eventual normalization of relations between the United States and
Cuba;
Whereas, beginning in 2015, the Department of Justice played an active role in
Operation Car Wash, or Lava Jato, a sprawling anticorruption probe which
was used to advance a partisan political agenda in Brazil, resulting in
the politically motivated conviction and imprisonment, and barring from
the 2018 Presidential election, of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva;
Whereas credible media reporting has exposed the extensive involvement of
Department of Justice officials in Lava Jato, including actively
advising Brazilian prosecutors outside of proper channels and acting in
violation of Brazilian law and bilateral treaty procedures;
Whereas, in 2017, President Donald Trump threatened to invade Venezuela
militarily and imposed broad unilateral sanctions against the country
that have significantly harmed the country's civilian population;
Whereas, in 2019, United States National Security Advisor John Bolton announced,
``Today we proudly proclaim for all to hear: the Monroe Doctrine is
alive and well.'';
Whereas the migration of Cubans and Venezuelans to the United States has
increased dramatically in the years following the imposition (and
reimposition) of broad economic sanctions against these countries;
Whereas, in late 2019, a military coup was staged against the elected Government
of Bolivia following unfounded claims of electoral fraud made by an OAS
Electoral Observation Mission, while the subsequent coup government
received support from the Trump administration and OAS Secretary General
Luis Almagro;
Whereas President Trump reversed the Obama administration's policy of
normalization with Cuba, imposed new sanctions, and, as one of his last
acts in office, put Cuba back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list
without justification;
Whereas the international community has resoundingly condemned the United States
embargo on Cuba, most recently during the 2025 United Nations General
Assembly, with the resolution condemning the embargo passing by 165
votes in favor, with only 7 against;
Whereas, in 2025, the Trump administration began sanctioning foreign officials
involved with Cuba's international medical missions, which for decades
have been deployed around Latin America, Africa, and Europe and have
been lauded by the World Health Organization and governments around the
world for providing crucial health care services to underserved
communities;
Whereas the United States Government has failed to apologize for its past
support for military coups in the region;
Whereas Investor State Dispute Settlement (hereafter in this preamble referred
to as the ``ISDS'') provisions found in United States-backed free trade
agreements allow multinational corporations to sue governments before
panels of corporate lawyers based on claims that regulatory frameworks,
including those designed to protect workers and the environment, will
lead to future losses, and thus far Latin American and Caribbean
countries have been sued a total of 346 times under ISDS provisions,
more than any other region of the world;
Whereas a United States-based company has filed an ISDS claim against the State
of Honduras for nearly $11,000,000,000 in alleged future losses, more
than a third of the country's yearly economic output, as a result of the
Honduran Government's announcement that the company can no longer
continue to operate as a Zona de Empleo y Desarrollo Economico, a
territorial area largely governed and controlled by private investors
that has been declared unconstitutional by the country's Supreme Court
and developed under former President Juan Orlando Hernandez;
Whereas President Trump interfered in Honduras' 2025 election, threatening to
cut off United States economic support to the country if voters did not
elect National Party candidate Nasry Asfura, and then issued a full
pardon of former Honduran president and National Party politician Juan
Orlando Hernandez who had been convicted in a United States Federal
court and sentenced to 45 years in prison for charges related to
narcotics trafficking and weapons;
Whereas the second Trump administration has pursued an aggressive policy of
individual sanctions targeting officials of countries across the region
that benefit from Cuban medical missions, which have made a well-
documented positive impact on health care systems facing challenges in
the region, across the Global South, and around the world;
Whereas President Trump has made multiple threats against Panama regarding
control of the Panama Canal, including pledging to ``take back'' the
Panama Canal, in violation of the Torrijos-Carter treaties;
Whereas President Trump signed a January 20, 2025, Executive order designating
drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and has, according to
credible media reporting, directed the Pentagon to target cartels
through military action, in potential violation of the sovereignty of
Mexico and other countries;
Whereas the Trump administration has enacted a policy of overt interference in
the judiciary and democratic institutions of Brazil in retaliation
against the Brazilian Supreme Court's trial of former Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro on multiple charges, including attempting to
foment a military-backed coup in order to stay in office after losing
Brazil's 2022 Presidential election;
Whereas the Trump administration has misused authorities under the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act (Public Law 95-223), section 301 of the
Trade Act of 1974 (19 U.S.C. 2411), and the Global Magnitsky Human
Rights Accountability Act (22 U.S.C. 10101 et seq.) in a politically
motivated effort to exert improper influence on judicial proceedings
held in accordance with Brazilian law and constitutional norms;
Whereas the Trump administration's policy toward Brazil risks producing
incalculable damage to the alliance between the United States and
Brazil, the two largest democracies in the Western Hemisphere;
Whereas the Trump administration has conducted a similar policy of overt
interference with regard to Colombia's judiciary in an effort to support
a political ally facing charges of witness tampering and fraud,
demonstrating an alarming pattern;
Whereas President Trump has established a partnership with the President of El
Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to wrongfully deport hundreds of people from the
United States without due process to face notoriously dangerous prison
conditions in El Salvador;
Whereas these individuals have been, in effect, forcibly disappeared, in a
manner reminiscent of what has taken place under dictatorships across
the region, often by regimes supported by the United States Government;
Whereas, in his second term, President Trump has ordered a series of
unauthorized military strikes in international waters targeting
Venezuelan nationals and other individuals allegedly involved in
narcotics trafficking, strikes that have led to over 100 casualties and
that were conducted in violation of the United States Constitution,
United States law, and international law, and which risk stoking a wider
military conflict with Venezuela and other countries;
Whereas, on January 3, 2026, the Trump administration, citing the Monroe
Doctrine, launched an unauthorized military attack against Venezuela in
violation of the United States Constitution and international law,
killing dozens and abducting the President and first lady of the
country;
Whereas President Trump publicly admitted that these actions were taken with the
intent of the United States ``running'' Venezuela and taking control of
its oil reserves;
Whereas President Maduro is being held in a New York prison and awaiting trial
on counts of ``narco-terrorism'';
Whereas, on January 5, 2026, following the abduction of Maduro and his detention
by United States judicial authorities, the Department of Justice dropped
its claim that the Cartel de los Soles is a distinct hierarchical
organization headed by Nicolas Maduro, although that claim had served to
justify targeting him and his government;
Whereas, since the beginning of his second term, President Trump has made
multiple statements referring to potential United States military action
and annexation, in violation of international law, targeting Cuba,
Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Canada, and other sovereign countries
throughout the Americas; and
Whereas the Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy establishes a
``Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine'' that prioritizes ``American
preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, . . . access to key geographies
throughout the region'' and the use of United States ``military
presence'' in the hemisphere for ``establishing or expanding access in
strategically important locations'': Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives
that--
(1) in order to send a strong signal to the region that the
United States Government wishes to turn the page on a long era
of political and military interference in the region, the
Department of State should formally confirm that the Monroe
Doctrine is no longer a part of United States policy toward
Latin American and the Caribbean;
(2) in place of the Monroe Doctrine, the Federal Government
should develop a ``New Good Neighbor'' policy, designed to
foster improved relations and deepen more effective cooperation
with all the countries of the Western Hemisphere, with measures
that include--
(A) developing, jointly with the Department of the
Treasury, the United States Trade Representative, the
Department of State, and the United States Agency for
International Development, a new approach to promoting
development based on a respect for the integrity of
sovereign economic development plans of the region's
governments, support for equitable and sustainable
economic transitions through technology transfers and
new forms of climate and development financing that
prioritize grantmaking and concessional lending;
(B) terminating all unilateral economic sanctions
imposed through Executive orders, and working with
Congress to terminate all unilateral sanctions, such as
the Cuba embargo, mandated by law;
(C) working with Congress to amend the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act (Public Law
95-223) and the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C.
1601 et seq.) to ensure robust congressional oversight
over the imposition of unilateral sanctions through
Executive orders, as per the original intent of the
authors of those pieces of legislation;
(D) working with Congress to develop legislation
that triggers an automatic review of bilateral
assistance to a government whenever there is an
extraconstitutional transfer of power, until the United
States and a majority of regional governments determine
that the new leadership is legitimate under that
country's constitution;
(E) establishing a policy of respect and
recognition of decisions made by sovereign countries
across the region with regard to matters such as
membership in international organizations and
institutions, support for specific regional groupings
and intergovernmental organizations, and decisions
regarding diplomatic recognition;
(F) proceeding with the prompt declassification of
all United States Government archives that relate to
past coups d'etat, dictatorships, and periods in the
history of Latin American and Caribbean countries that
are characterized by a high rate of human rights crimes
perpetrated by security forces and paramilitary
organizations that received United States support;
(G) working with Latin American and Caribbean
governments on a far-reaching reform of the
Organization of American States to--
(i) ensure accountability surrounding any
potentially unethical or criminal activities in
which the Secretary General or other senior
officials have been involved;
(ii) ensure full transparency surrounding
the financial and personnel decisions taken by
the Secretary General;
(iii) establish an ombudsman's office that
is fully independent from the Secretary
General;
(iv) ensure that the electoral observation
division of the Department of Electoral
Cooperation and Observation of the Organization
of American States is independent from the
Office of the Secretary General and is
appointed by a majority of Organization of
American States members; and
(v) ensure that the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights and its rapporteurs
are financially independent from the Secretary
General's Office;
(H) working with Congress to secure major,
recurrent contributions to the Amazon Fund;
(I) supporting democratic reforms to the
International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American
Development Bank, and other international financial
institutions to ensure that the developing countries of
the region are able to play an equitable role in
shaping the lending and grantmaking policies of those
institutions;
(J) supporting regular issuances of International
Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights to help avert
balance of payments difficulties and to promote greater
fiscal space for regional governments, thereby allowing
them to expand investments in health care, education,
economic development, and in climate adaptation and
mitigation programs;
(K) advocating for the International Monetary Fund
and other relevant institutions to undertake a shift
away from fiscal consolidation, loan conditionality,
and other regressive policies, and instead embrace an
agenda focused on--
(i) robust and sustained economic growth;
(ii) expanded access to health care and
education to all;
(iii) achieving universal social
protection;
(iv) supporting progressive tax reforms
that benefit low-income communities, workers,
women, and historically marginalized
communities; and
(v) actively supporting the advancement of
workers' rights, decent work, and
sustainability; and
(L) supporting the creation of a Loss and Damage
Trust, under the auspices of the United Nations, to
support climate action in developing countries, and
working with Congress to secure major, recurrent
contributions to this fund;
(3) the United States should work with regional bodies,
such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States,
the Caribbean Community, the Union of South American Nations,
the Southern Common Market, and other regional groups, to
increase cooperation around the major challenges of the present
time, including the response to climate change, inequality,
arms trafficking, tax evasion, illicit financial flows
(particularly those derived from drug trafficking), the
protection of workers' rights, and promoting the rights of
Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendent communities; and
(4) the United States should, in every instance, respect
international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity
of countries in the Western Hemisphere and throughout the
world, and should respect international human rights law, which
prohibits extrajudicial killings, including in international
waters.
<all>
Submitted in House
Submitted in House
Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committees on Financial Services, and Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committees on Financial Services, and Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committees on Financial Services, and Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
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