{"id":309475,"date":"2025-12-08T12:01:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=309475"},"modified":"2025-12-08T09:15:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T09:15:21","slug":"latin-america-the-trump-corollary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/12\/latin-america-the-trump-corollary\/","title":{"rendered":"Latin America: The Trump Corollary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

James Monroe – Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

Bloody U.S. Imperialism in Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to Maduro<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

7 Dec 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0In recent months, the Trump administration has escalated a decades-long campaign<\/a> against the Venezuelan government and people. The renewed, intensifying threats of regime change<\/a>, justified through false or inflated claims<\/a> that Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, its president, is directing narco-terrorism<\/a> against the United States, serve as a convenient pretext for deeper and more direct intervention.<\/p>\n

A recent wave of extrajudicial killings<\/a> at sea, the directing of the CIA to launch covert ops<\/a> inside Venezuela, the surge of U.S. troops<\/a> into the Caribbean, the reopening of a long-shuttered naval base<\/a> in Puerto Rico, and the deployment of the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Gerald Ford<\/a> in the region represent striking but not surprising developments. These are little more than the latest expression of an ideological project through which Washington has long sought to shape the hemisphere in ways that would entrench U.S. power further and protect the profits of Western multinationals.<\/p>\n

That formal project dates back to at least the 1823 Monroe Doctrine<\/a>, when the U.S. unilaterally claimed Latin America as its exclusive sphere of influence. Its revival today is unmistakable and distinctly dangerous<\/a>. As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared<\/a>, echoing the language of that two-century-old policy, \u201cThe Western Hemisphere is America\u2019s neighborhood, and we will protect it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results of that doctrine have long been clear<\/a>: immense profits for the few and violence, political upheaval, social dislocation, and economic devastation for the many. While Washington\u2019s imperial desires in the hemisphere have long been met by movements challenging U.S. dominance, these have repeatedly been forced back into the subordinate position assigned them in a global capitalist order designed to benefit their not so \u201cgood neighbor<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no accident that, by the mid-1970s, Latin America had been transformed into a hemisphere dominated by U.S.-backed right-wing authoritarian regimes. Entire regions like the Southern Cone<\/a> became laboratories for repression, as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay formed a coordinated bloc of military juntas. With direct support from Washington, those regimes oversaw what came to be known as Operation Condor<\/a>, establishing a transnational network of state terror. Its consequences were catastrophic: 50,000 killed, tens of thousands \u201cdisappeared,\u201d and hundreds of thousands tortured and imprisoned for the so-called crime of harboring real or perceived leftist sympathies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The \u2018pau-de-arara\u2019 is a preferred form of torture in Brazil, introduced by Henry Kissinger and the CIA in the 1960\/80\u2019s Operation Condor. Electric shocks, 220v, are applied to limbs, genitals and anus, cigarette burns, beatings. When a person lost consciousness, they would throw a bucket of water over him\/her and go on. Deaths are not uncommon during torture.
The TMS editor was tortured in the pau-de-arara in his 20s [circa 1969] in Brazil, falsely accused of being a Communist.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

During that earlier period, Venezuela had been largely spared the brutal excesses of direct U.S. interventionism in the region (due in part to the repressive rule of successive U.S.-supported strongmen\u00a0Juan Vicente G\u00f3mez<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Marcos P\u00e9rez Jim\u00e9nez<\/a>). That changed in 1998, when Hugo Ch\u00e1vez<\/a>, Maduro\u2019s<\/a> far more popular predecessor, became president and pursued policies of popular sovereignty<\/a> and resource nationalism<\/a> aimed at ensuring the nation\u2019s vast oil reserves (the\u00a0largest in the world<\/a>) served Venezuelans rather than being siphoned off to enrich foreign corporations. From then on, Venezuela became the latest target<\/a> of Washington\u2019s efforts to undermine, discipline, and ultimately neutralize \u201ctroublesome\u201d progressive governments across Latin America.<\/p>\n

To fully understand Washington\u2019s current warpath in the region, it\u2019s necessary to revisit earlier episodes in which the U.S. intervened, violently and anti-democratically, to shape the political destinies of countries in the hemisphere. Three cases are especially instructive: Cuba, Guatemala, and Chile. Together, they illuminate the long arc of U.S. imperialism in Latin America and clarify the dangers of the present confrontation.<\/p>\n

The Rise of Plattismo<\/em> in Cuba<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cuba had long been a crown jewel in Washington\u2019s imperial imagination. By 1823, American political elites were already casting the island as essential<\/a> to the future of the United States. President John Quincy Adams, for instance, described Cuba<\/a>, then a Spanish colony, as \u201cindispensable\u201d to the country\u2019s \u201cpolitical and commercial interests.\u201d He noted<\/a> ominously that, should the island be \u201cforcibly disjointed from its own unnatural connection with Spain and incapable of self-support,\u201d it could \u201cgravitate only towards the North American Union.\u201d Thomas Jefferson similarly maintained<\/a> that the possession of Cuba was \u201cexactly what is wanting to round out our power as a nation.\u201d In that spirit, during the 1840s and 1850s, Presidents Polk and Pierce sought to purchase Cuba<\/a> from Spain, overtures that were repeatedly rejected.<\/p>\n

Those efforts unfolded during a period of rapid U.S. territorial expansionism, marking a time when Washington regarded continental conquest as both a \u201cprovidential destiny<\/a>\u201d and a political and economic imperative. When ostensibly legal mechanisms like land purchases<\/a> could be invoked, they were embraced. When military force offered a more expedient path to territorial acquisition, as with the war of aggression<\/a> that stripped Mexico of half its territory and delivered what became the American Southwest to U.S. control in 1848, it was undertaken with little hesitation.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to pursue longstanding ambitions in Cuba and inaugurate the U.S. as an overseas empire arrived with the Spanish-American War<\/a> of 1898. In that conflict, Washington intervened in anti-colonial uprisings from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, not to champion genuine liberation but to ensure that any subsequent \u201cindependence\u201d would be subordinated<\/a> to U.S. strategic and economic interests. What emerged was a political order deliberately engineered to keep Cuba firmly tethered to the priorities and power of the United States.<\/p>\n

That would be codified in the 1901 Platt Amendment<\/a>, which effectively nullified Washington\u2019s earlier assurances of Cuban sovereignty and granted Washington the right to establish military bases (including Guant\u00e1namo<\/a>), substantial control over the Cuban treasury, and the ability to intervene whenever the U.S. deemed it necessary<\/a> to safeguard its arbitrarily defined notion of what constituted \u201cCuban independence\u201d or to defend \u201clife, property, and individual liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n

In practice, Cuba emerged from the war as a dependent protectorate, not a sovereign nation. That model was soon codified for the entire hemisphere with the Roosevelt Corollary<\/a> to the Monroe Doctrine issued in 1904, which granted the United States a self-appointed mandate to police the region to maintain \u201corder.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Cuba, that arrangement would serve Washington\u2019s interests for decades. By 1959, on the eve of the Cuban Revolution, U.S. corporations controlled<\/a> 90% of the island\u2019s trade, 90% of its public services, 75% of its arable land, and 40% of its sugar industry. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Cubans remained landless, disenfranchised, and mired in poverty.<\/p>\n

By breeding staggering inequality, Washington\u2019s imperialism rendered Cuba ripe for revolution. In 1959, following years in exile, Fidel Castro returned to the island<\/a> to overwhelmingly popular support, having launched an armed struggle after attempting to run in the 1952 elections that the Washington-backed Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista cancelled<\/a>. Rather than confront the policies that had produced the revolution, U.S. officials moved to make an example of Castro, waging an obsessive campaign<\/a> to undermine his revolutionary government and punish the population whose support had made his ascent possible.<\/p>\n

Washington pursued everything from ill-fated invasions to assassinations, plots that, in October 1962, brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust<\/a>. It also imposed a punishing economic blockade<\/a> designed to choke the island\u2019s economy, render socialism a stillbirth, and deter other nations from challenging U.S. hegemony. Those efforts foreclosed the possibility of constructive engagement, which Castro had initially signaled he was open to<\/a>, pushing Cuba decisively into the Soviet orbit, and creating the very outcome Washington claimed it had sought to avoid.<\/p>\n

The Fall of Guatemala<\/strong><\/p>\n

Castro<\/a> did not return to Cuba alone. He arrived alongside the Argentinian Ernesto \u201cChe\u201d Guevara<\/a>, who would become a key ideologue of the revolution, bringing with him a commitment to constructing a global, anti-imperialist movement. The two first met in 1955 in Mexico City<\/a>, where Castro was organizing in exile and Guevara had resettled after working as a doctor in Guatemala, a country he had entered to support the democratic spring of President Jacobo \u00c1rbenz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The democratic experiment in Guatemala was abruptly and violently extinguished in 1954, when a U.S.-backed coup<\/a> toppled \u00c1rbenz. From that experience, Guevara carried with him an indelible lesson about the reach of U.S. power and Washington\u2019s willingness to deploy force in defense of corporate interests, along with the profoundly antidemocratic and destabilizing consequences of U.S. intervention across the hemisphere.<\/p>\n

That coup in Guatemala was carried out in service to that country\u2019s real center of authority, the Boston-based United Fruit Company<\/a>. Founded in 1899, United Fruit consolidated its foothold there through a series of preferential corporate arrangements, as successive strongmen ceded vast tracts of land and critical infrastructure to the company in exchange for personal enrichment. In the process, Guatemala was transformed into the archetypal \u201cbanana republic<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

United Fruit came to dominate<\/a> Guatemala\u2019s agricultural and industrial sectors, transforming itself into one of the most profitable corporations in the world. It secured extraordinary returns through its monopoly power, wage suppression, and the criminalization of labor organizing. Its influence extended into the highest levels<\/a> of Washington. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had represented United Fruit as a senior partner at the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles, had previously served on that company\u2019s board.<\/p>\n

\u00c1rbenz regarded United Fruit not just as a threat to Guatemala\u2019s sovereignty but also as an engine of injustice. In a country where 2% of the landholders controlled 72% of all arable land<\/a> (more than half controlled by United Fruit), much of it left deliberately fallow, he sought to challenge a system that denied millions of peasants access to the land on which their survival depended. His land reform program<\/a> applied only to uncultivated land. The government proposed purchasing idle tracts at their declared tax value (based on the company\u2019s own assessments). Yet because United Fruit had systematically undervalued<\/a> its vast land holdings to evade taxes, the company refused.<\/p>\n

\u00c1rbenz\u2019s policies, driven by the fact that he was a nationalist (not a communist), were committed to dismantling Guatemala\u2019s imperial dependency. His objective was to transform<\/a>, as he put it, \u201cGuatemala from a country bound by a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state, and to make this transformation in a way that will raise the standard of living of the great mass of our people to the highest level.\u201d Yet, in the ideologically charged climate of the early Cold War years, such New Deal-style reforms were recast by Washington as incontrovertible proof that a \u201cSoviet beachhead<\/a>\u201d was taking root in Central America.<\/p>\n

By 1954, U.S. officials insisted that they had \u201cno choice\u201d but to intervene to prevent the country from \u201cfalling\u201d to communism. The subsequent coup<\/a> relied on an orchestrated propaganda campaign, the financing of a mercenary army, and the aerial bombardment of Guatemala City. The combined pressure of all of that coerced \u00c1rbenz into resigning. In his final address<\/a>, he condemned the attacks \u201cas an act of vengeance by the United Fruit Company\u201d and stepped down in the hope, quickly dashed, that his departure might preserve his reforms.<\/p>\n

Power would soon be transferred to the military regime of Carlos Castillo Armas<\/a>, while U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower triumphantly proclaimed<\/a> that \u201cthe people of Guatemala, in a magnificent effort, have liberated themselves from the shackles of international Communist direction.\u201d In reality, United Fruit had expanded its influence, while the country descended into decades of state terror. The civil war<\/a> that followed claimed more than 200,000 lives, including a genocidal campaign<\/a> against the indigenous Ixil Maya people, carried out with direct U.S. support<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Crushing of Chilean Socialism<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Guatemala exposed Washington\u2019s readiness to destroy a modest social democracy in the name of communism and in defense of corporate power, Chile demonstrated the full, violent maturation of unrepentant Cold War interventionism. When the socialist physician Salvador Allende<\/a> won the presidency in 1970 in a democratic election, Washington immediately went on the warpath<\/a>, launching a covert, sustained campaign to strangle his government before it could succeed.<\/p>\n

Allende sought to expand social welfare and democratize the economy<\/a>. His program called for the nationalization of strategic industries, the expansion of healthcare and education, the strengthening of organized labor, and the dismantling of entrenched monopolistic landholdings. Those initiatives drew support from a broad, multiparty alliance rooted in Chile\u2019s peasants as well as its working and middle classes. Above all, Allende\u2019s agenda<\/a> aimed to reclaim the nation\u2019s mineral wealth from foreign capital, especially the U.S.-based copper giant Anaconda<\/a>, whose staggering profits bore few meaningful returns for the Chilean population.<\/p>\n

President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger found that intolerable and quickly came to regard Allende not just as a symbolic but a real threat<\/a> to U.S. power in the region. After all, a successful socialist state achieved through the ballot box risked demonstrating that another political and economic path was indeed possible.<\/p>\n

What followed was a coordinated campaign of economic, social, and political destabilization. The CIA funneled millions to Chile\u2019s opposition parties, business associations, and media outlets. It financed strikes and disruptions designed to create and weaponize scarcity, to (in Nixon\u2019s words<\/a>) \u201cmake the economy scream\u201d and erode confidence in Allende\u2019s Popular Unity government. U.S. officials also cultivated ties with reactionary factions in the Chilean military, encouraging coup plots and ultimately directly supporting the overthrow of Allende<\/a> on September 11, 1973.<\/p>\n

What emerged was one of the bloodiest dictatorships in the hemisphere in the twentieth century. General Augusto Pinochet\u2019s<\/a> regime would carry out widespread torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings, while U.S.-trained economists<\/a> imposed radical neoliberal policies (similar to the failed ones<\/a> now being implemented by Javier Milei in Argentina with the help of a Donald Trump bailout<\/a>) that dismantled social protections and opened Chile\u2019s economy to foreign capital.<\/p>\n

Hands Off Venezuela<\/strong><\/p>\n

In every instance where the United States intervened in Latin America, leaving tens of thousands dead and entire societies destabilized<\/a>, it was never really communism that Washington feared. What alarmed policymakers and the corporate interests they served was the prospect that nations in the hemisphere might escape the economic architecture of U.S. dominance.<\/p>\n

When Hugo Ch\u00e1vez completed the nationalization of Venezuela\u2019s oil sector in 2007<\/a>, he followed a long and perilous trajectory established by regional leaders who dared to confront U.S. power. In doing so, they committed what Washington considered the \u201ccardinal sin\u201d of asserting sovereign control over national resources within a hemisphere it had long treated as its strategic preserve. These leaders demonstrated, however briefly, that it was possible to stand up to the United States, but that such defiance would ultimately be met with overwhelming force.<\/p>\n

Independent powers in this hemisphere going their own way were the threat that Washington and Wall Street could never tolerate. It\u2019s the same reason the United States is once again maneuvering toward open conflict in Venezuela. To proceed down such a path will, of course, mean reenacting some of the most catastrophic chapters of U.S. foreign policy. The lesson of such imperial adventurism in Latin America is unmistakable. When Washington interferes in other nations, the outcome is never stability or democracy but their absolute negation.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Eric Ross is an organizer, educator, and PhD candidate in the history department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 Eric Ross<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – tomdispatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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