Almost half a century ago, at just 30 years of age, Wim Wenders directed one of his landmark films, titled The American Friend. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game, the screenplay featured Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz in the leading roles. The relationship between the two characters drives the story: a ruthless American art dealer (Hopper-Ripley) hires a German picture framer and restorer suffering from a serious illness (Ganz-Zimmermann) to carry out a contract killing in exchange for the money he desperately needs.
As the second half of the 1970s got underway, the international landscape was very different from today’s. Yet Wenders’ decision to change the title of the film has always been seen as a critical nod to the relationship that then existed between the United States and Germany. The coercion born of an unequal relationship revealed its darker side.
Less than ten years later, Italian Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi found himself at the center of a serious confrontation with the U.S. government under Ronald Reagan. The crisis stemmed from the U.S. interception of an aircraft carrying members of the Palestine Liberation Front, who had themselves hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro off the Egyptian coast with more than 500 people on board, murdering one passenger. It was an unprecedented clash between the two countries since the end of the Second World War, with sovereignty at the heart of the dispute, after U.S. fighter jets forced the aircraft to land at the NATO military base in Sigonella, Sicily, in October 1985.
Craxi invoked Italian sovereignty and, in a historic decision, ordered the Carabinieri to surround the aircraft on the runway, where it was already encircled by U.S. troops. The crisis was resolved relatively quickly, but the prime minister resigned shortly afterward, engulfed in a major corruption scandal linked to political financing—something that, moreover, was widespread in Italian politics at the time. It was always speculated that the leak had originated on the American side, whose conduct outwardly exemplified friendship.
In mid-May of this year, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Reuters the agency’s collaboration in the investigation that led to the indictment of former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. According to the court order, documentation sent by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to the Central Brigade for Money Laundering and Anti-Corruption Investigations of Spain’s National Police, which specializes in financial crime and transnational organized crime, was incorporated into the National Court’s investigation into the €53 million bailout granted to airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic.
Rodríguez Zapatero is not only an icon of Spanish socialism and certain sectors of the left; he was also the prime minister who, in 2004, withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq. Earlier still, while serving as leader of the opposition, he drew attention in Madrid by refusing to salute the U.S. flag during the National Day military parade on October 12, 2003. Rodríguez Zapatero remained seated and did not applaud as the U.S. Marines invited to the ceremony by then-Prime Minister José María Aznar marched past.
Europe is a distant stage for Latin American countries when analyzing their relations with the United States. From the Monroe Doctrine to the hemispheric defense system, passing through gunboat diplomacy, the policy of the stick and the carrot, and the Good Neighbor Policy, the picture differs from the one shaped by the ties forged under the North Atlantic Treaty, whose evolution from the Cold War to the present has been so turbulent. Nevertheless, the bonds of friendship—whether genuine or feigned—that likely inspired Wim Wenders in making his film have played a significant role.
These were the ties on display when President Eisenhower visited dictator Francisco Franco in December 1959, thereby eclipsing the iconic image of Franco embracing Hitler in Hendaye in October 1940. The friends had changed. Or when Aznar, in an unmistakable display of enduring friendship, casually crossed his legs on a coffee table during his visit to George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford in February 2003, foreshadowing the agreement reached a month later at the Azores Summit, which confirmed Spain’s support for the invasion of Iraq.
Today, the American friend welcomes to Mar-a-Lago a long list of Latin American presidents who regard his unequivocal recognition as the reward for their compliance and for their expectations of recompense, both personally and for their countries. There are 250 years of history forged through ideas, work, and people who shaped a nation built by those fleeing famine, religious persecution, or simply seeking a better future, in pursuit of what would later become the narrative of the American Dream. This profound transformation, unfolding gradually over time, has blurred the landscape that had been established over so many years.
In Colombia, within a month, President-elect Abelardo De la Espriella will present an unusual profile, defined by his U.S. citizenship, which he has no intention of relinquishing. Yet standing opposite him are multitudes of people whose varied identities project them into a melting pot in which the elements that might classify them as American friends are ambiguous. They are now Americans who are also Cuban, Dominican, Panamanian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Haitian, and much more besides. The American friend—that individual who, like Ripley, enjoys impunity because of his nationality—is now an uncertain hybrid figure.
If the current American president projects the image of the country to the world through his narcissistic extravagances, cloaked in the arrogance of rampant techno-feudalism, then nothing could be further from reality—although I may, after all, be mistaken.
Autor
Director of CIEPS - International Center for Political and Social Studies, AIP-Panama. Honorary Emeritus Professor at the University of Salamanca and UPB (Medellín). Latest books: "El oficio de politico" (Tecnos Madrid, 2020), "Huellas de la Democracy Fatigada" (Océano Atlántico Editores, 2024) and "Cuando la política dejó de ser lo que era" (Océano Atlántico Editores, 2025).
