Greeted as Liberators

“My first official duty should be to respectfully request you to convey to His Excellency the President of the United States, on behalf of the people of Panama, an expression of the grateful sense of their obligation to his Government. In extending her generous hand so spontaneously to her latest born, the Mother of the American Nations is prosecuting her noble mission as the liberator and the educator of the peoples. In spreading her protecting wings over the territory of our republic the American Eagle has sanctified it. It has rescued it from the barbarism of unnecessary and wasteful civil wars to consecrate it to the destiny assigned to it by Providence, the service of humanity, and the progress of civilization.” - Philippe Bunau Varilla to US Secretary of State John Hay, Nov. 7, 1903

This is one hell of a job of ego-boosting. Despite being of French ancestry, Varilla was the first ambassador of Panama to the US (after engineering Panama's revolution and independence from Colombia--with US help--in 1903). You could say that he was the Ahmed Chalabi of Panama (except he was successful).