On October 27, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson addressed the Southern Commercial Congress in Mobile, Alabama, outlining his vision for American relations with Latin America. He made a striking declaration: “the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest.” Instead, he said, the nation would demonstrate that it knew how to make “honorable and fruitful use” of the territory it already possessed.
Wilson rejected a foreign policy governed by material interests, arguing that the United States should treat its Latin American neighbors with “equality and honor.” He warned that foreign economic influence could undermine their independence and placed “human rights, national integrity, and opportunity” above commercial advantage. His address presented American power as a force for constitutional liberty rather than territorial expansion.
Yet his presidency exposed the tension between those principles and the exercise of American power. In April 1914, less than six months after the Mobile speech, Wilson ordered an operation that sent American sailors and Marines ashore at Veracruz, beginning a military occupation of the Mexican port. His administration subsequently launched occupations of Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916. These actions were not territorial annexations, but they sharply complicated his promise of relations founded on equality, national integrity, and respect for his neighbors’ interests.
