Starting in the late 1800s until the early 20th century, the United States conducted the Banana Wars, a series of military interventions in Central America to protect the interests of American corporations in the region.
In 1934, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the US initiated the “Good Neighbor Policy”, pledging not to invade or occupy Latin American countries or interfere in their internal affairs. However, during the Cold War, the US financed several campaigns aimed at overthrowing elected leftist leaders in the region.
Many of these operations have been coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was established in 1947.
As Washington builds a massive military presence closer to Venezuela’s coast and continues airstrikes on Venezuelan boats it claims are smuggling drugs into the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, US President Donald Trump says he has not ruled out a land operation inside the country. Many observers believe that Trump’s allegations that Venezuela is responsible for drug trafficking are a mask for his real objective of regime change there.
We look at the history of some such interventions in the United States.
Guatemala in the 1950s
In 1954, Guatemala’s elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán was ousted by CIA-backed local militias led by US President Dwight Eisenhower.
Arbenz had sought to nationalize a company, creating fear within the US over more socialist policies in Guatemala.
Under the CIA’s Operation PBSUCCESS, the agency trained fighters led by Carlos Castillo Armas, the military officer who took power after the coup. There was a civil war in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996 between the Guatemalan government and army on one side and leftist rebel groups on the other.
In Cuba in the 1960s
In 1959, Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro came to power by ousting dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Under Eisenhower, the CIA devised a plan to train Cuban exiles to invade the country and overthrow Castro. US President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat who won the 1960 election, was briefed on the plan during his inauguration.
Castro learned about the training camps through Cuban intelligence. In 1961, Kennedy signed off on the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a plan by Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. However, the invasion failed when Cuban forces pressed on them.
Brazil in the 1960s
In 1961, João Goulart came to office as President of Brazil with a mandate to pursue social and economic reforms. He maintained good relations with socialist countries such as Cuba and nationalized a subsidiary of the US-owned International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT).
In response, the CIA funded pro-US politicians and supported anti-communist groups. This weakened Goulart’s leadership, culminating in a military coup in 1964, which established a US-friendly dictatorship that lasted until 1985.
In Ecuador in the 1960s
After going through 27 presidents between 1925 and 1947, Ecuador saw a rare period of stability in the 1950s.
This was not going to last. In the early 1960s, the US was concerned by the pro-Cuban policies of President José Velasco Ibarra and his Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena, who advocated closer relations with the Soviet Bloc countries.
The CIA financed the spread of anti-communist sentiment in the country, using American labor organizations as its medium.
“In the end, they (the CIA) were the bosses of almost everybody who was anybody (in Ecuador),” a CIA agent later told analyst Roger Morris in a 2004 CIA-approved assessment of the agency’s activities in Latin America.
Arosemena first launched a coup against Ibarra, and initially veered to the left, before trying to soften his position. Then, in 1963, the military staged a coup against him, banning the Communist Party and breaking relations with Cuba to suit American interests.
In Bolivia in the 1960s and 70s
Between 1963 and 1964, the US used covert funding, primarily through the CIA, to influence Bolivian politics.
The funding supported leaders who were friendly to the US, and in November 1964 supported a military coup led by General René Barrientos Ortuño against elected President Victor Paz Estenssoro. The coup was successful and Paz Estenssoro was forced into exile.
But America did not intervene in Bolivia.
By the early 1970s, Washington was eyeing another regime change. This time the target was President Juan Jose Torres, who came to power in 1970 and nationalized many American companies in the country.
According to the official history of the US State Department, in June 1971 the US ambassador to La Paz told Washington that it needed to support Torres’ opponents. The White House secretly sought and received $410,000 ($3.3 million in today’s money), which administration critics described as “coup money”, to finance military leaders and political leaders opposed to Torres.
Two months later, senior military officer Hugo Banzer led a successful coup against Torres. The US continued to fund Banzer’s government, which ruled until 1978. Almost two decades later, Banzer once again returned to power after winning the elections in 1997.
Chile in the 1970s
The CIA provided funding to help overthrow the presidency of Salvador Allende, an elected leftist leader. Allende planned to nationalize Chile’s copper companies, many of which were owned by American interests.
CIA funding was used to support rivals of Allende and spread anti-communist sentiment. This led to a military coup in 1973 led by General Augusto Pinochet. Allende shot himself with an AK-47 rifle before being captured: the cause of his death remained in doubt for decades, only to be confirmed by an independent autopsy several years later.
Augusto Pinochet’s brutal US-backed dictatorship lasted for 17 years.
1970s: Operation Condor in six countries
In 1975, the CIA established an international network called Operation Condor to support right-wing military dictatorships in six Latin American countries. It started during the American presidency of Gerald Ford.
Targeted countries include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. The purpose of this operation was to crush political dissidents, leftists and communist supporters. The dictatorship used a shared database to monitor dissidents and their families across state borders.
They used tactics such as intelligence, information, exchanging prisoners and torture techniques. At least 97 people were killed as part of the operation, according to Plan Condor, a joint initiative of Latin American organizations and the University of Oxford.
In El Salvador in the 1980s
In December 1981, the Salvadoran Army’s elite Atlacatl Battalion carried out a deadly massacre in the village of El Mozote, killing approximately 1,000 civilians, including women and children. This was during the El Salvador civil war of 1980–92.
The battalion was trained and equipped by the US as part of its larger Cold War policy of suppressing leftist insurgencies in Latin America. The US government significantly increased military aid to El Salvador between 1980 and 1982.
In Grenada in the 1980s
It was a familiar story by now. Prime Minister Maurice Bishop of the small Caribbean island adopted Marxist–Leninist policies after seizing power himself in 1979 while the previous Prime Minister, Eric Garry, was out of the country.
In the early 1980s, the US was concerned about Cuban influence in Grenada. As bloody conflict broke out within Bishop’s party over a leadership conflict in October 1983, the US launched an operation called Operation Urgent Fury, invading the country, capturing Cubans in Grenada and ensuring that the country’s future was aligned with US priorities.
In Panama in the 1980s
In 1989, during the US presidency of Republican George H.W. Bush, the US invaded Panama. The invasion was called Operation Just Cause.
The US downplayed the death toll and justified the attack, saying it was carried out to remove President Manuel Noriega for alleged drug trafficking.
<a href