It’s the festival of Semana Santa in Peru, the Holy Week leading up to Easter and a major national holiday. Normally, the narrow road above Chorrillos Beach in Chancay would be clogged with visitors – as well as vendors trying to entice them with Inca Kola and roasted corn kernels, or boogie boards and beach towels.
But this year, Carmen Echegaray, a candy and soda vendor, is sitting alone at the one snack stand here in a fishing hamlet in Chancay, a small city north of Lima known for its picturesque beaches. Ms. Echegaray nods to the container cranes looming in the distance, part of the giant maritime port constructed by China and opened last year. It was the port’s construction, she says, that turned this once-popular sandy beach into an unappealing ribbon of wave-splashed rocks along Chancay’s cliffs.
Still, Ms. Echegaray says the arrival of the port hasn’t been all bad. “It’s true the Chinese have taken away our pretty beach. But it’s also true they have brought in jobs.”
Why We Wrote This
China is expanding its influence in Central and South America. The Trump administration seems to want to reboot the Monroe Doctrine and claim the hemisphere as America’s exclusive domain.
Her son was a temporary hire in one phase of the port’s construction. Her daughter is now in training for a logistics position at what is largely an automated operation, including self-driving vehicles that zip around the newly constructed concrete docks.
With a sigh and a shrug of her shoulders, Ms. Echegaray adds, “I guess overall it’s progress.” Many in Peru see the massive new port the same way.
Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
In the United States, however, the administration of President Donald Trump views the megaport with growing alarm. Not only was it constructed by the state-owned Chinese shipping conglomerate, Cosco; it was trumpeted at its opening last November by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
In the first few months of his second term, Mr. Trump has presented a vision of the Western Hemisphere that hearkens back to a 19th-century spheres-of-influence approach to international affairs: The regions of North, Central, and South America should be exclusively the United States’ economic, diplomatic, and military domain.
This approach is disrupting the postwar global order and the system of regional alliances led by the U.S. and its allies for nearly 75 years, experts say. In the eyes of many, it’s the Monroe Doctrine redux.
Mr. Trump has now provoked those allies, casually saying the U.S. should annex Greenland, make Canada the 51st state, and, more seriously, take back the Panama Canal. In a cheeky headline pun, the New York Post declared his approach the “Donroe Doctrine.”
In 1823, President James Monroe declared the Americas off-limits to the imperial European powers that had colonized them. Moreover, the United States, Monroe said, would consider an attack on, or interference in, any independent nation within the Americas as an attack on the U.S.
Two centuries ago, the U.S. worried that Spain, France, Portugal, or others might try to undermine or even take back the newly independent but weak former colonies in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, were also aware that Russia’s czar had stated an interest in both the Oregon territory and California and fancied lands as far south as Peru.
Monroe’s declaration, coming from a republic that had fought a war of independence from its own colonial power not yet 50 years prior, also expressed solidarity with the fledgling democracies of South America, which had also won independence from European control.
Today President Trump’s preoccupation with foreign dominance in the region is focused squarely on Beijing. Among his concerns are China’s influence over critical infrastructure in Central and South America, including the ports at either end of the Panama Canal, and now China’s ownership of the megaport at Chancay. This economic and diplomatic clout has made China the top trading partner of most countries in Central and South America.
China’s hunger for soybeans and other farm products has led Argentina and Brazil to reorient their agricultural production. China’s ongoing quest for rare earth minerals like lithium, needed for the world’s cutting-edge technology industries, has made it the dominant player in South America’s mining sector.
In Monroe’s time, an “Americas for Americans” doctrine resonated as new nations found common cause throwing off colonial rule. But many Central and South American nations remain wary of the U.S.
For more than a century, Washington frequently employed heavy-handed tactics with its hemispheric neighbors. Military interventions were aimed more at installing pro-U.S. regimes. The U.S. rarely nurtured democratic self-governance, and often disregarded it completely.
“The image of a supportive and cooperative United States that some leaders in Latin America saw in the original Monroe Doctrine has long since been replaced by a disdain for the sense of domination and bending of the region to the United States’ will,” says Britta Crandall, a political scientist specializing in Latin American studies at Davidson College in North Carolina.
“Originally the Monroe Doctrine was more nuanced and complex than that,” she says. “And certainly there is no longer any interest in protecting Latin America from an imperial Europe. But what we are hearing from Trump 2.0 is very much the Monroe Doctrine of unbridled meddling in the hemisphere.”
Others go further, noting that the belligerence and interventionist rhetoric President Trump has freely expressed this year is more similar to a corollary to that 19th-century doctrine: the aggressive “big stick” approach introduced by President Theodore Roosevelt.
“This willingness to talk military action against neighbors, whether it’s Greenland or Canada or Panama, wasn’t even a whisper in the document of 1823,” says Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. “The message to the Europeans, but also to the new democracies to the south was, ‘We stand together as the Americas in our common pursuit of security and prosperity.’”
For Professor Crandall, the doctrine’s revival under President Trump is in part an effort to give some intellectual heft to what is otherwise a largely transactional approach to the hemisphere.
“If we are witnessing the resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine when many of us thought it was dead,” she says, “I think we can see in that a desire to apply a veneer of historical legacy and legitimacy to this effort to keep China out.”
Tensions over who controls the Panama Canal
Perhaps no country in Latin America captures so sharply the complex and hegemonic relationship the U.S. has had with its hemispheric neighbors as Panama.
The U.S. has been a dominant force in Panamanian affairs for more than a century, from advocating for Panama’s independence from Colombia in 1903 to completing the construction of the Panama Canal and running it until it was transferred to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999.
In fact, no other fixture in Latin America symbolizes so intensely the visceral and contradictory pangs many people feel toward the U.S. than the Panama Canal.
On a sticky-hot Thursday in March, Alejandro Ortiz leans on the rail of a second-story observation deck overlooking the canal’s Miraflores locks.
“The canal is important for the world, but it belongs to Panama,” says Mr. Ortiz, who recently retired from a 30-year career in neighboring Colombia’s air force. He is in Panama for a private security conference. “Trump wants other countries to have eyes only for the U.S., but that won’t happen. It’s not how geopolitics work today,” he says.
Latin American nations, especially in South America, have been looking to China more in recent years. “We know the U.S. is the world power in many themes, not just military. But they are no longer a hegemony. China is growing and incorporating more into Latin American markets,” he says. “We have African countries looking for closer relations, too.”
In recent years, Central and South American countries have had more of a “relationship with the U.S. than a dependency on it,” says Mr. Ortiz, who considers that shift a good thing. “But still, it’s an unbalanced partnership, and it’s unrealistic for Trump to expect us to all turn back to how things were three, four decades ago.”
Below him, an empty chemical tanker, a tourist-filled cruise boat, and a small tugboat spewing black exhaust are cozy together in the first section of the Miraflores locks as they idle here before heading toward the Atlantic Ocean.
In the distance behind them stand the steel towers and cranes of a port at the Pacific entrance of the canal. Operated by China, this port has taken center stage in U.S. accusations that the Panama Canal is controlled by China and is now posing economic and security threats to the U.S.
Since 1998, the port has been run by a Hong Kong-based conglomerate. In March, it agreed to sell its stake to a group of American companies, including BlackRock Inc. (The sale has been delayed due to pushback and political pressure from China.)
Despite these high-stakes geopolitical maneuvers, when it comes to canal operations and neutrality, what owns and runs these ports doesn’t matter, says Jaime Troyano, who has spent the past 26 years as a Panama Canal historian.
Any ship, no matter what country it’s traveling from or operated by, is steered through the canal by an employee of the Panama Canal Authority, a government agency responsible for the operation and management of the canal.
“It’s something not very many people grasp,” says Mr. Troyano. “No matter who is running the port out there, for a boat to enter the canal” neither China nor the U.S. is involved, he says, motioning toward the Pacific.
Still, President Trump’s second administration has put a laser focus on canal operations. There were two official U.S. visits to Panama within the first four months of his presidency, and the military is reportedly preparing plans to intervene in how the canal is run, regardless of Panama’s stance on the topic.
Some 6 miles away from the Miraflores Visitor Center, in the historic neighborhood of El Chorrillo, Alexandra Celprado says she grew up hearing about her grandmother’s quick thinking the night of Dec. 20, 1989 – the day the U.S. invaded Panama.
As U.S. tanks thundered into her community and helicopters landed on residential streets, Ms. Celprado’s grandmother grabbed her husband’s Panama Defense Forces uniform and set it ablaze. She wanted to rid the home of anything that might be mistaken as support for Gen. Manuel Noriega, the dictator for whom “los Yanquis” came to search. Today, bullet holes from the invasion still pock building facades and lampposts.
Scott Applewhite/Reuters/File
I was brought up and educated “to fight for Panama, to love my country, and to help my people,” Ms. Celprado says, adding that her father worked in the Canal Zone when she was growing up and her family benefited from that economically.
“I don’t hate the United States; I never have, but I have to stand up for my country,” she says of the claims that the canal belongs to the U.S. and that China is taking over.
“Monroe has been dead for almost 200 years,” says Olga de Obaldía, executive director of the Foundation for the Development of Citizen Liberty, a chapter of Panama’s Transparency International. “He’s dead and buried, and his big stick was buried with him.”
Trump administration worried about Chinese influence in the Americas
When Peru’s foreign and defense ministers made a trip to Washington in early May, the point of the high-profile visit was not a photo op for a handshake at the State Department or a bilateral public statement on tariffs.
Instead, it was an “enhanced honor cordon” at the Pentagon, hosted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. In his public remarks, Mr. Hegseth made very clear the meeting’s purpose: to underscore the threat China poses in the Western Hemisphere.
“Beijing is investing and operating in the region for unfair economic gain, and together, in order to prevent conflict, we need to robustly deter China’s potential threats in the hemisphere,” he told his Peruvian guests. “Putting America first also means we’re putting the Americas first.”
China’s megaport at Chancay did not come up in public comments. But growing concerns in the Trump administration and in Congress about the port – and what some see as its potential to serve as a beachhead for Chinese military activity – formed a backdrop for the visit.
For some, Chancay could be President Trump’s next target in his bid to secure the hemisphere and confront China’s rising economic and political influence. He has already floated the idea of slapping special tariffs on goods arriving at Chancay.
The port is shaping up as a key element of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global strategy to build ports, railroads, and other economic infrastructure in more than 150 countries. When ultimately completed with 15 docks, the megaport at Chancay is expected to be the principal conduit for shipping South America’s raw materials and agricultural products to China, as well as for importing Chinese products into Latin America. China’s ambassador to Peru has described the port’s potential to make Chancay the “Shanghai of South America.”
In many ways, the sprawling facility is the center of a wider hub-and-spoke system of ports for China-Latin America trade – similar to the system that major airlines use for organizing their principal flight routes, says the Army War College’s Dr. Ellis.
“If one power has the exclusive rights to use the hub in such a system, as China does with Chancay, that can pose a problem to the interests of others drawn to trade and investment with the region,” he says.
Then there are the growing qualms over what some see as Chancay’s potential as a “dual-use” facility. A vocal minority in Peru worries about the port’s potential use by China’s military in the event of a conflict in the Pacific.
“The current lack of clarity and transparency surrounding the port of Chancay raises questions and suspicions about what the future uses of the port might be, and – especially now with Mr. Trump in the White House – puts Peru at the center of the U.S.-China geopolitical game,” says Gregory Paredes, a retired Peruvian navy commander and prominent Chancay critic. “The silence from our authorities over what the port is and isn’t only feeds suspicions about the dual-use potential.”
Mr. Paredes notes that a Peruvian congressional commission found the potential for China’s use of Chancay “worrisome” in a 2023 report – and perhaps contrary to the interests of Peru. “Why not be crystal clear about what Chancay can and cannot be, so we can avoid problems with our friends in Washington?” he asks.
Still, others in Peru consider such worries overblown at best. Indeed, many see instead a bright future in which the giant port enhances South America’s economic integration and prosperity. This in turn would be positive for the U.S. and its relations with the region.
“Instead of a menace, envisioning Chancay as a port that can enhance our regional integration and cooperation would be a great advantage,” says Diego García-Sayán, a jurist at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and former Peruvian foreign minister.
“Unfortunately, we [in Latin America] are very weak on economic and political integration,” he says, “and we know we can’t expect any leadership in this area from the current powers in Washington.”
Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor
Is Monroe 2.0 mismatched with the 21st-century world?
Washington has been abuzz with chatter over the prospects of a Monroe Doctrine 2.0 ever since President Trump declared in his second inaugural address that the U.S. “will once again consider itself a growing nation – one that increases our wealth, expands our territory … and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.”
Then Mr. Trump raised the possibility of taking back the Panama Canal – by force if necessary. Within days of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to Panama in March, Panama promptly announced its withdrawal from China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Partisans crowed, “Monroe is back!”
Some pundits posit that Mr. Trump is aiming to expand the doctrine globally, citing his trade policy based on coercive tariffs, the driving force of his nationalist economic policy.
But across much of Latin America, and especially in South America, the return of the Monroe Doctrine is widely seen as nationalist nostalgia. Disruptive and a sign of an era of big-power competition? Yes, some say. But it’s a policy ultimately mismatched with the 21st-century world, many believe.
“No, there will not be a new ‘Monroe-ismo,’” says Manuel Rodríguez Cuadros, a former Peruvian foreign minister. “The ‘America First’ and unilateral actions of Trump will lead countries to adjust their relations with the U.S.,” he adds. “But no one expects the aspect of banding together as a hemisphere that was part of the original.”
Indeed, many diplomats and international relations experts cite two overriding reasons that, ultimately, the Monroe Doctrine does not fit the Trump 2.0 moment.
First, China is not a distant threat, as the European powers were in 1823, but a well-established and even, in some South American countries, dominant economic presence and trade partner that would be difficult to replace.
“To a considerable degree, the resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine is related to a perceived need to do something about the Chinese presence in the region,” says Jorge Heine, a former Chilean ambassador who is now a professor of international relations at Boston University. “But I must break the news to Mr. Trump and his administration: That horse is already out of the barn,” he says.
Since 2000, when the U.S. and the European Union were Latin America’s principal trading partners, China has increased trade with the region fortyfold to become its dominant trade partner.
“Peru now exports more to China than to the EU and the U.S. combined,” Ambassador Heine says. “About a quarter of all agricultural imports to China come from South America’s southern cone alone. Is the U.S. going to replace that?”
There is also the critical question of infrastructure. Noting that Latin America’s low rate of infrastructure investment sits above only sub-Saharan Africa in global rankings, Mr. Heine says it should be a mystery to no one why so many Latin American countries have signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
“Some in Washington see that as a threat,” he says. “But the reality is that American and European companies aren’t generally involved in the big infrastructure projects the region needs.”
It’s a perspective backed up by experience, others say. “Many people in business and other sectors would like to see more interest from our friends to the north,” says Dr. Cuadros.
“But the reality is that two decades of U.S. neglect of Latin America opened the door to a role for China that is not going to be reversed.”
Second, the ideas behind the doctrine – or at least those first laid out by Monroe – do not fit the current moment because it would entail a revival of the sense of community and common cause within the Americas. No one senses that is happening.
“A true return to the Monroe Doctrine would mean a renewal of the republican spirit and hemispheric solidarity that was a glimmer in the original document,” says José Antonio Meier, a former Peruvian deputy foreign minister and ambassador.
“But in today’s Washington, the regional multilateralism that gained ground in the 1990s and which was a descendant of that aspect of the Monroe Doctrine is now dismissed as ‘woke,’” he says.
With multilateralism off the agenda, the countries of Latin America are going to pursue their interests with a variety of partners, Dr. Cuadros says – especially since the region’s historical partner is squarely focused on its own interests.
“The Monroe Doctrine had a Pan-American perspective that you could say was the original ‘Americas First,’ meaning all of the Americas together,” Dr. Cuadros says. “But now with Trump it’s ‘America First,’ which subjugates the common interests of all the Americas to those of the United States.
“In that reality,” says the Peruvian, “our only choice is to watch out for ourselves and work with the whole world.”
Howard LaFranchi reported from Chancay, Peru; and Washington. Whitney Eulich reported from Panama City.
