Mexico and the Monroe Doctrines, 1863–1920: From Appropriation to Rejection.

A broad historiographic consensus exists on two aspects of the Monroe Doctrine: its association with the projection of international power by the United States within the Americas, and the series of adjustments and modifications to its meaning which, thanks to the vagueness of its original wording, shaped the Monroe Doctrine during the first century after its proclamation.[1] However, there is less clarity about the precise form and timing of the association between U.S. power and the Doctrine. Historian Juan Pablo Scarfi has identified this Argentinean school as being a source of inspiration for the movement of "legal anti-imperialism", which was also hostile to the institutionalization of Pan-Americanism.[40] Then, at the crucial juncture of 1898, the Monroe Doctrine was not an instrument of war: U.S. President William McKinley did not include it in his rhetoric to justify the U.S. conflict with Spain and intervention in Cuba; instead, it was present in the anti-imperialist U.S. discourse. The Mexican liberal elite's appropriation of the Monroe Doctrine was not an intellectual response, but part of a survival strategy; it led to an intense political and information campaign in the United States, based on the defense of Monroe's principles and their connection to Mexico's state of emergency. Mexico's proximity to the United States has caused the existence of a latent political cost within Mexican foreign policy, linked to the risk of damaging relations with its powerful neighbor, while Mexico's focus on the Caribbean and Central America has overlapped with areas that were a focus of U.S. policies - historian Robert E. Hanigan has called the region the "center of gravity" for U.S. action - inspired by the Monroe Doctrine.[7] Neither of these two factors solely determined the outcomes, but both contributed to shape bilateral interactions in connection to the Doctrine. [Extracted from the article]