United States territorial acquisitions
The Panama Canal Zone was an unorganized US territory located within the Republic of Panama. It was established under the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty in 1903 and disestablished in 1979 under the Torrijos–Carter Treaties. Panama gained full control over the Panama Canal in 1999.
Latin America–United States relations
The Anglo-Venezuelan boundary dispute of Guayana Esequiba in 1895 asserted for the first time a more outward-looking American foreign policy, particularly in the Americas, marking the United States as a world power. This was the earliest example of modern interventionism under the Monroe Doctrine, in which the U.S. exercised its claimed prerogatives in the Americas. By the late nineteenth century the rapid economic growth of the United States increasingly troubled Latin America. A Pan-American Union was created under American aegis, but it had little impact as did its successor the Organization of American States.
As unrest in Cuba escalated in the 1890s, the United States demanded reforms that Spain was unable to accomplish. The result was the short Spanish–American War of 1898, in which United States acquired Puerto Rico and set up a protectorate over Cuba under the Platt Amendment rule passed as part of the 1901 Army Appropriations Bill. The building of the Panama Canal absorbed American attention from 1903. The US facilitated a revolt that made Panama independent from Colombia and set up the Panama Canal Zone as an American owned and operated district that was finally returned to Panama in 1979. The Canal opened in 1914 and proved a major factor in world trade. The United States paid special attention to protection of the military approaches to the Panama Canal, including threats by Germany. Repeatedly it seized temporary control of the finances of several countries, especially Haiti and Nicaragua.