Why the U.S. Treats Latin America Differently from Europe—and How Ignorance Makes It Easy
By a regulated optimist who grades with a pencil, votes with both hands, and still believes maps should tell the truth.
I. The Two-Map Problem
Walk into any American newsroom on a slow afternoon and point to a globe. Paris elicits sighs; Prague, a study-abroad anecdote; Berlin, a memory of train schedules that ran to the minute. Say Tegucigalpa, and the room tilts. Not hostility—just air pockets of unknowing.
This isn't a moral failing; it's an infrastructure failure of knowledge. Surveys show Americans score modestly on international affairs quizzes and spend far less attention on foreign news than on domestic controversy. Pew's global quiz pegs the average at roughly 6–7 correct answers out of 12; a recent industry survey found a majority of Americans consume little or no international news, with Europe and the Middle East drawing far more interest than the Americas next door.
Foreign policy lives on this twin map—one side laminated (Europe), one side smudged (Latin America). Where the public knows and cares, Washington speaks of allies, shared institutions, burden-sharing. Where the public knows less, Washington reaches for conditionality, certifications, waivers, and the endless convenience of an executive pen. Different rules creep in not because we are villains, but because democracies do what they can get away with when the audience is small.
What follows is an anatomy of those double standards, and a sketch of how to retire them without becoming naïve.
II. The Long Memory of the Short Attention Span
Start at the archive. The record is not ambiguous: U.S. covert action helped topple Guatemala's elected government in 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS), with declassified training files that now read more like noir than policy. In Chile in 1973, the United States midwifed a coup against Salvador Allende, later accommodating itself to Pinochet's dictatorship. These are not debate-club claims; they're in the documents.
The habit did not end with the Cold War. Through Plan Colombia (launched in 2000), the U.S. poured > $10 billion in State and Defense funds over two decades, pairing counternarcotics with a counterinsurgency that had human-rights conditionality attached—and unevenly enforced. Mexico's Mérida Initiative (from 2008) added another security-lite nation-building package, roughly $3.3 billion by 2021, rebranded later as the Bicentennial Framework. This is not a moral verdict on the programs; Colombia's homicide rates fell from civil-war peaks and the state did regain ground. It is to notice the grammar: aid tied to certifications, training, compliance reports—Washington as regional proctor.
With Europe, the idiom is different. The U.S. argues in the language of coordination and mutual confidence. Even when interests diverge, the tone bends toward accommodation: witness the 2021 U.S.–Germany understanding that effectively waived certain Nord Stream 2 sanctions, trading pressure for promises and a joint statement about "energy security" and support for Ukraine. (Berlin later froze the pipeline after the 2022 invasion, but the point here is procedural: deference to an ally's domestic politics first, coercion second.)
With Latin America, we default to tools that bite quickly at the border, the bank, or the ballot box: visa restrictions, certifications, extraterritorial sanctions. With Europe, we default to communiqués.
III. Sanctions, Extraterritoriality, and the Weight of Familiarity
Sanctions tell the story cleanly. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) runs an archipelago of programs. Some target adversaries (Russia, Iran). Others police neighbors: Cuba (a comprehensive embargo codified in the Helms-Burton Act), Venezuela, Nicaragua. The legal reach is often extraterritorial, threatening non-U.S. firms that do business with the target—a style that Europe officially resists as a breach of comity. When the U.S. reactivated Helms-Burton's Title III in 2019 (allowing lawsuits over expropriated property), the European Union revived its "blocking statute" shielding EU companies from U.S. court judgments. Friends do not sue friends' firms lightly; with Latin America, Washington has.
By contrast, even on contentious files with Europe, Washington has been willing to waive sanctions to preserve alliance cohesion—Nord Stream 2 before the war being the canonical example. That waiver was not a capitulation; it was an admission that strategy sometimes needs consent. The contrast is the point: deference for a familiar ally, legal cudgels for a nearer, poorer neighbor.
None of this argues against sanctions where warranted—Venezuelan officials, Nicaraguan enforcers, and Cuban organs have earned accountability. It does argue for habits: when Europe displeases, we negotiate an understanding; when Latin America displeases, we list people. The tool one reaches for first reveals the relationship one believes exists.
IV. Borders as Policy Laboratories (and Stage Sets)
Immigration rules are domestic law with foreign-policy shadows. Consider the Visa Waiver Program. Today, 41 countries—nearly all of them in Europe plus a handful of Pacific allies and a very few in the Global South—can send citizens for short visits without visas (subject to ESTA). In the Western Hemisphere, very few countries enjoy that status; Chile is the notable case. Visa policy is not a popularity contest; it reflects overstay rates, security cooperation, and trust. Still, it is also a map of whom the U.S. presumes innocent.
Then there are the border-era experiments: Title 42 health expulsions (March 2020–May 2023), executed millions of times under a public-health statute and litigated half to death; and the Migrant Protection Protocols ("Remain in Mexico"), which returned asylum seekers to Mexico to wait out U.S. hearings. Whether one cheered or lamented these moves, they were extraordinary assertions of executive power toward Latin American flows—policies the electorate would never accept if aimed at, say, French tourists or German students. That, too, is a double standard—enforced by ignorance as much as by design.
V. The Politics of Low Salience
Political scientists have an old joke: public opinion on foreign policy is a mile wide and an inch deep. On Europe, the inch deepens through NATO, movies, and exchange programs. On Latin America, the inch thins. Americans still tell pollsters they want the U.S. to play a leading or major role in world affairs, but the trendline has sagged to modern lows; when asked to prioritize goals, the public assigns less value to supporting other countries economically than to protecting U.S. security. And in the daily diet of news, international coverage has shrunk steadily over decades. These are not abstract findings; they are operating conditions under which White Houses decide what they can sell.
Low salience begets permission structures. Policies that would trigger congressional hearings if aimed at Paris go unremarked when aimed at Managua. The result is not only unfair; it is unstrategic. Resentment is a kind of debt, and the hemisphere keeps the books.
VI. Casefile: Three Illustrations of the "Different Rules" Rule
A) Cuba: The Eternal Exception
No European ally labors under a U.S. embargo; Cuba does, in statute and spirit. The Helms-Burton framework makes normalization hard even when presidents want it, and its Title III lawsuits outsource foreign policy to private litigants. Europe has said for years this violates comity and shields its firms accordingly. Meanwhile, the embargo is domestic theatre: a policy maximal enough to satisfy domestic constituencies and impotent enough to leave the island poor and regime-entrenched. If that sounds harsh, ask whether any U.S. ally would be treated this way for six decades.
B) Venezuela & Nicaragua: The List as Policy
Against Venezuelan and Nicaraguan officials, the U.S. has deployed targeted sanctions and mass visa restrictions, paired with public advisories to businesses and carriers—tools meant to stigmatize and squeeze. In many cases they are deserved. But the reflex matters: with Europe, Washington begs, bargains, and issues joint statements; in the hemisphere, it names and shames as first instinct. The danger is that sanctions drift from instrument to identity, making it harder to reverse course when openings arise.
C) Nord Stream 2: Waiver by Friendship
In 2021, to steady ties with Germany, the U.S. waived certain sanctions on the pipeline's corporate operator—despite bipartisan pressure in Congress. The waiver bought goodwill, time, and a joint U.S.–German pledge around Ukraine. No equivalent indulgence exists for hemispheric disagreements; the grammar with Europe is "our shared security," with Latin America it is "their compliance."
VII. The Drug War as Asymmetry Machine
Plan Colombia is a Rorschach test. On one reading, U.S. assistance helped a near-failing state claw back territory, reduce kidnappings, and sign a peace with FARC; the program matured into a broader governance agenda. On another, it entrenched a militarized drug war, exported U.S. priorities, and tolerated abuses by security partners until scandals forced recalibration. Both readings are true; the ledger is mixed. But the conditionality itself—benchmarks, certifications, equipment end-use checks—captures a posture the U.S. rarely adopts toward European police forces or ministries of defense. Friends get joint task forces and photo-ops; neighbors get metrics.
The Mérida Initiative followed a similar arc: billions for counter-drug, justice reform, and border technologies after 2007, often paired with human-rights conditions and annual reports. Notably, the format of assistance—earmarked, certified, reportable—is the lasting policy technology. In a public sphere attuned to Europe, such instruments would be political events; in our hemisphere, they are routine.
VIII. The Courtesy Gap (or, Why Language is Policy)
Courtesy in diplomacy is not etiquette; it is recognition. The United States possesses a continental advantage in soft power—Spanish is our second public language by use, our cities carry Iberian names, our markets run on hemispheric supply chains—yet we often do not speak like a neighbor. Visa rules advertise suspicion; travel regimes like the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative layered new document requirements that felt, to millions of ordinary cross-border families, like a silent accusation after 2009. We had reasons; we rarely had empathy in our prose.
If you doubt that words matter, ask any mayor who has tried to publish flood warnings only in English. Policy that cannot be heard is not policy; it is posture.
IX. Why the Double Standard Persists (and Why It Hurts)
History's Gravity. The transatlantic alliance is institutionalized in NATO, decades of basing, and elite circuits. The inter-American system exists, but the OAS does not structure American life the way NATO does.
Economic Symmetry. Europe buys what we sell at the price we want; Latin America competes and migrates. Politicians pander to exporters and punish migrants.
Media Habits. A decades-long decline in foreign reporting and a platform-driven news economy leave most Americans with a thin hemispheric picture. When audiences don't know, governments are freer to improvise.
Law's Shortcuts. Sanctions, visa regimes, and certification clauses are unilateral tools—faster than alliance management, satisfying to wield, and domestically legible. What they save in speed they lose in legitimacy.
The bill comes due in geopolitics. A U.S. seen as paternal in the Americas will find fewer takers for the hard asks (on migration enforcement, China 5G, or rare-earths supply chains). Resentment is not always dramatic; it is often procedural—delays, leaks, "misunderstandings." Strategy decays in the paperwork.
X. A Better Rulebook (Six Practical Reforms)
1) Reciprocity by Default
Adopt a presumption that tools used on Latin America should be no harsher than those used on Europe for equivalent behavior. If Berlin gets a communiqué first, Bogotá and Mexico City should, too.
2) Extraterritoriality with Restraint
Reserve extraterritorial sanctions (like Helms-Burton Title III) for global adversaries, not neighbors. Where private suits export U.S. law, use sunset clauses and waiver pathways tied to measurable reforms.
3) Sanctions with Off-Ramps
Design sanctions packages with specific, public criteria for relief. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, pair human-rights lists with a timeline and a verification mechanism co-signed by trusted third parties. (The instrument is not the identity.)
4) Visa Policy as Strategy, Not Reflex
Expand trusted-traveler and work-and-study channels for the hemisphere; publish regular overstay dashboards to justify decisions. The Visa Waiver Program may remain limited for security reasons, but the tone of mobility should shift from presumption of guilt to presumption of partnership.
5) Hemispheric Literacy as National Security
Make Spanish a civic language of federal service delivery (alerts, permits, benefits) and fund exchange programs with the Americas at Erasmus scale. If Americans knew Medellín's Metrocable or Bogotá's TransMilenio as well as they know the Paris Metro, our city plans would be better and our foreign policy kinder.
6) Audit the Double Standard
Order an annual, public Policy Parity Report comparing tools deployed toward Europe and the Americas: sanctions, waivers, military aid conditionality, visa rules. Bureaucracies behave better when they expect graphs.
XI. Vignettes from a Repaired Meridian
Berlin, 2021. The U.S. and Germany release a joint statement that amounts to a truce over Nord Stream 2. It is a masterclass in diplomatic hedging: principles, promises, contingency plans. Had the counterpart been Buenos Aires, would the document have been a waiver—or a warning?
Havana, any year. A European firm weighs a project and reads the EU blocking statute—Brussels' reminder that comity is a two-way street when Washington swings Helms-Burton. Somewhere in Miami, a lawyer files a Title III case. In Brussels, a diplomat sighs: not this again.
Matamoros, 2019. A family stares across the river while the Migrant Protection Protocols shuffle their asylum hearing to a distant month. Policy, to them, is a tent, a list, and a rumor. A republic that would never park Luxembourgers in a camp has parked Hondurans.
XII. The Masterstroke We Keep Missing
The United States is not two countries; it is two confidences. With Europe we are confident enough to be patient. With Latin America we are anxious enough to be severe.
We could reverse that. We could be patient with neighbors—investing in institutions, speaking in the language people actually use, rewarding partial improvements—and severe with ourselves, demanding policy that survives the scrutiny of parity. We could design off-ramps as carefully as we design penalties, build visa architecture that presumes partnership, and draft sanctions we are proud to lift when facts change.
The impediment is not capacity. It is imagination—and habit.
XIII. A Short, Honest Syllabus (for those who want to know)
- Pew Research Center, "What Do Americans Know About International Affairs?" — the quiz that reveals our floor
- Pew Journalism Fact Sheets — the downward slope of foreign coverage, the context for our ignorance
- U.S. Treasury (OFAC) — the index of sanctions programs and country pages (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua). Read the instruments before you praise or condemn them
- CRS on Plan Colombia and Mérida — the anatomy of security assistance, conditionality, and outcomes
- U.S.–Germany Nord Stream 2 statements/briefings — case study in allied deference and the politics of waivers
- CBP/DHS on Title 42 and MPP — how domestic tools became hemispheric policy
- State/DHS on Visa Waiver — who we presume friendly, and why
XIV. Epilogue: A Neighbor's Rule
Borges, who understood that maps betray their makers, might write this injunction on a library card and slip it into our foreign-policy drawer: Treat neighbors as you treat friends, and friends as you treat yourself. Vonnegut would translate it to Midwestern: "Be kind. It's past due." John Irving would set it in a kitchen where the argument outlasts the pie, and someone finally says the quiet thing out loud: we have been ungenerous to the countries that share our weather.
A regulated optimist insists this can change. The evidence is not sentimental; it is procedural. Write policies with parity checks. Use reciprocity as a design constraint. Expand the public's map so officials cannot cut corners in the dark. When the United States learns to speak to Latin America with the same courtesy it uses with Europe—backed by the same seriousness—it will discover something that was always true: that the hemisphere is not an afterthought but home.
And at home you do not waive the rules for one child and write new ones for another. You teach both, you listen to both, and you draw the same bright line across the kitchen floor: we do not make strangers of our neighbors.
This is the fifth in the Sol Meridian series exploring the hidden continuities that shape American public life. From the ghost of New Spain to the bench of mirrors, from the hidden hemisphere to the republic of detours to neighbors and exceptions—five meridians of light crossing the same democratic experiment.