tes, U.S. intervention in Cuba "for the preservation of Cuban independence" was permitted, and a formal treaty detailing all the foregoing provisions was provided for. To end the U.S. occupation, Cuba incorporated the articles in its constitution. Although the United States intervened militarily in Cuba only twice, in 1906 and 1912, Cubans generally considered the amendment an infringement of their sovereignty. In 1934, as part of his Good Neighbor policy, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt supported abrogation of the amendment's provisions except for U.S. rights to the naval base. In the Roosevelt Corollary (1904) to the Monroe Doctrine the United States assumed "an international police power" in cases where Latin-American insolvency might lead to European intervention. Foreign intervention in Latin American resurfaced as an issue in U.S. foreign policy at the turn of the century as European governments began to use force to pressure several Latin American countries to repay their debts. For example, British, German, and Italian gunboats blockaded Venezuela’s ports in 1902 when the Venezuelan government defaulted on its debts to foreign bondholders. Many Americans worried that European intervention in Latin America would undermine their country’s traditional dominance in the region. Quoting an African proverb, Roosevelt claimed that the right way to conduct foreign policy was to "speak softly and carry a big stick." Roosevelt resorted to big-stick diplomacy most conspicuously in 1903, when he helped Panama to secede from Colombia and gave the United States a Canal Zone. Moen 3Construction began at once on the Panama Canal, which Roosevelt visited in 1906, the first president to leave the country while in office. He considered the construction of the canal, a symbol of the triumph of American determination and technological know-how, his greatest accomplishment as president. As he later boasted in his autobiography, "I took the Ist...
