I struggled with this one mightily. I wanted to use the anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine as a springboard to show when American countries earned their independence, but this turned out to be much harder than I thought. Several countries had to go to war time and time again in order to become free. This took a long, long time to track down and it nearly put me to sleep a number of times. I can only imagine what it did to our poor readers. Monday, Dec. 2, 2013.