Bloody century of U.S. intervention in Latin America

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U.S. strikes on Venezuela are not an aberration; they are the latest act in a long, devastating tradition of military operations and regime-change projects across Latin America. From Guatemala in 1954 to Panama in 1989 and now Operation Absolute Resolve in 2026, Washington has repeatedly sacrificed Latin American lives and sovereignty in the name of "stability" and "democracy."

What happened over Caracas in the early hours of January 3 is shocking, but not unfamiliar: Identify a troublesome government, brand it a "threat," and decide – unilaterally – that regime change is a U.S. prerogative.

The coup against Guatemala's elected President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 pioneered this model. His crime was not terrorism or aggression, but land reform that touched the holdings of United Fruit, a powerful U.S. corporation, and challenged the social order Washington preferred. The message was clear: defy U.S. economic interests, and your government may not survive.

The CIA-backed operations toppled Arbenz and ushered in a line of military regimes that helped plunge the country into a 36‑year civil war, costing over 200,000 mostly indigenous lives. The official justification was the fight against communism; the long-term reality was scorched-earth campaigns, mass displacement, and a society scarred by state terror.

In Chile, U.S. pressure and covert action helped destabilize Salvador Allende's elected government and paved the way for Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup. This operation resulted in thousands being killed or disappeared, and turned Chile into a laboratory for economic shock therapy.

In Nicaragua, when the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew a pro-U.S. dictatorship, Washington began funding anti-government forces inside the country, not only training their fighters but also encouraging them to lay naval mines in key Nicaraguan ports. The U.S.-incited civil war dragged the country into prolonged armed conflicts, leaving it as one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

In Panama, the U.S. – in a bid to attain lasting control of the Panama Canal – dispatched elite forces in 1989 to topple its military government, leaving nearly 500 Panamanians dead.

Each case is different in detail, but the pattern is the same: the U.S. wraps raw power in the language of liberation, then walks away from the wreckage it leaves behind.

Today's Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela follows this lineage almost too neatly. Dozens of aircraft, pre‑dawn strikes around Caracas, and the capture of President Nicolas Maduro are defended as a surgical blow for "justice" and regional "security." Yet, as in past interventions, the true purpose is to overthrow the government that Washington dislikes.

Venezuelan authorities report both civilian and military deaths from the initial wave of strikes, while parts of Caracas lost power and residents sheltered from explosions they neither chose nor controlled. Worse still, the grim record from Guatemala to Chile, to Nicaragua, and to Panama shows that U.S. guns rarely deliver the democracy they promise; instead, they tend to entrench polarization and deepen the very crises they claim to solve.

This is the true cost of the Monroe Doctrine mentality that still haunts U.S. policy: The belief that the hemisphere is a sphere of influence, not a community of sovereign nations. Every time Washington chooses missiles over multilateral diplomacy, it confirms that, in practice, Latin American lives are expendable in the service of U.S. strategic narratives.

Latin America is not a blank map on which the U.S. may manipulate politics at will; it is a region with its own history, institutions, and aspirations. Countries that endured the coups and invasions of the 20th century have long memories, and the echoes of Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Nicaragua in the 1980s, and Panama 1989 now frame how they see the attacks on Caracas in 2026.

Every operation only reaffirms an old truth in the region: For the United States, Latin America has too often been less of a neighbor than a battlefield.

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